Comedy Central renews '@midnight' for second season

It looks like "@midnight," the late-night Internet-themed quiz show, has scored major points with Comedy Central, getting renewed for a second season that will air in 2015.

The announcement, appropriately enough, came just after midnight (on the East Coast), with host Chris Hardwick revealing the news during his Monday appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon."

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"@midnight" (or "At Midnight," as the cable guide might label it) has proven to be a hit new entrant to Comedy Central's established late-night roster (it follows "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report") — particularly, and unsurprisingly, among the young demographic (#duh).

"People always ask me when '@midnight' airs," quipped Kent Alterman, president of content development and original programming for the network, said in the network's official announcement.

After a successful four-week trial run last October, in which it averaged more than 450,000 viewers (outpacing competition from fellow cable talkers), the series scored a 40-week, first-season pickup on the Viacom-owned network. It currently averages 769,000 total viewers.

The interactive half-hour series, which airs Monday through Thursday, brings social media and improv comedy together with its comedic panelists and offbeat crowdsourcing campaigns.

And it has kept Hardwick, former host of MTV's '90s dating-game show "Singled Out," busy on the hosting front. He also fronts "Walking Dead" post-show gabfest "Talking Dead," in addition to his popular Nerdist podcasts.

"'@midnight' has been an absolute dream come true for me — a game show of Internet jokes with my comedian friends," Hardwick said in a statement . "I cannot thank Comedy Central enough for letting us continue. If they hadn't, you can damn well bet that I would have forced people to come over to my house to play it anyway, for no audience, so everyone is thankful we dodged that bullet."